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Leaving the EU: Integrated Foreign Policy

There are various ways to do this. I do not expect to succeed in merging the Department for International Development and the Department for International Trade back into the FCO. It is an option

that we should explore, and we should look honestly at whether it is the best, but if it is not—I suspect the Minister will argue that—I would very much like to explore ways to increase joint working, because it works at a strategy level.

I take issue with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said about the National Security Council, because I am not sure it works as well as it could when it comes to setting strategy. We need a national strategy council because the National Security Council’s role is still too reactive. It is moving towards integration and looking at strategy, which I will come to if I do not run out of time—I want to make sure the Minister has time to respond.

There are many different ways of doing this, but at a departmental level, the integration to achieve greater effect and greater power sometimes breaks down. Arguably, it can also break down at an ambassadorial level; I will develop that argument in a second. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield and my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) for their interventions and their important contributions to the debate, which I take in good faith.